FRANK OWEN SALISBURY RP (1874-1962). Portrait of Miss Beatri...

Hammer

£6,500

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FRANK OWEN SALISBURY RP (1874-1962). Portrait of Miss Beatrice Harrison playing a cello, signed and dated 1944, oil on canvas,
56½x 40in. Exhibited : Society of Portrait Painters; Russell Cotes Museum and Art Gallery, Bournemouth.
One of the exhibition labels on the reverse of the painting somewhat enigmatically titled Pietro & Beatrice. 'Pietro' being a reference to Beatrice's cello which was made by Pietro Guarneri (Pietro da Venezia, 1695-1762).
Beatrice Harrison was an English Cellist, and sister of the violinist May Harrison. A life-long friend of the composer Frederick Delius, many of whose works for the instrument were written for her.
Beatrice studied at the High School of Music, Berlin, under Hugo Becker. In 1910 she won the Mendelssohn award. Later she became Edward Elgar's preferred soloist for his Cello Concerto, which she recorded twice with Elgar in 1919 and 1928. In 1921 she gave the first festival performance of Edward Elgar's Cello Concerto outside London at the Three Choirs Festival in Hereford. In 1924 Beatrice was the subject of the first ever BBC live outside broadcast when she played the cello in her Surrey Garden, seemingly performing with an accompaniment of nightingales.
In 1944 (the year in which this portrait was painted) Beatrice Harrison is said to have played a particularly memorable solo in a concert during Sir Henry Wood's final season in London.